Flying
by shadoedseptmbr
Summary: Down at the Docks, Hawke remembers.


_Another minor tale in "Flipping Coins." Late in Act 1._

_Bioware owns all, I just gratefully play in their sandbox._

**Flying**

Hawke couldn't seem to help it. Every time they came to the Docks, she headed to this stairway. Why was there even a stairway here? If you wanted to walk into the water, it would be perfect, but who would walk into this? It was fetid, filled with bilge from the docked ships and whatever else Kirkwall felt free to dump here. Trash, old flowers, dead fish, dead people.

There were birds though. If you looked out over the water, ignored the ships, ignored Isabela cooing over the ships. Ignored the bloody Gallows looming on the horizon. Look up and there were birds in the sky. Gulls and pipers and pelicans and, occasionally, a hawk blown in from a storm.

She walked down the steps, so that if the tide shifted slightly her boots would be soaked. She shouldn't get her boots wet. There wasn't money enough for a spare pair and she'd be stuck inside Gamlen's hovel until they dried. Fenris went barefoot everywhere. She should ask him sometime how he'd toughened his feet up enough for that. She'd grown up barefoot, but she doesn't think she could walk that way all the time, fight that way.

Not once has anyone ever asked her why she did this. Came to the docks and stared at the birds. They just hung back, talked amongst themselves until she came back to them. She imagined Merrill would ask. Merrill asked about everything. But not this. Today though, Fenris had padded up behind her.

Something had changed since the night he followed her home from the Hanged Man. He'd followed her home and just lurked in the shadows across from Gamlen's until she'd stood from her perch on the porch and gone inside. He didn't know she'd realized he was there. But it had been nice. She'd been able to ignore where she was for a few minutes and just retreat, pull away from the world from having to be aware every minute of who was there and where someone might leap from the dark. Fenris had watched for her. He knew how to watch for threats from the dark. She trusted him enough to let him. When had that happened?

Silently, he waited a few steps farther up. Maybe he wanted to know why. Or maybe he was trying to get her to move along so that he didn't have to smell rotting fish any longer.

"When I was about fourteen I started a trap line. I walked it every morning and every night, about two miles from the house, where the woods started. It was always quiet and I ran it along a stream, so I could hear the water."

"The house was small, you know. Father always meant to add a new room or two. But we were used to piling on top of one another. And it was warmer in the winter."

He was listening. He had moved down another step.

"I could walk the traps, though, everyday. So I did. Sometimes there were rabbits. Or mink. Usually they were empty, but I walked anyway. I got to the end of the line, one day, and there was a girl there. 'Bout my age, maybe a year or so younger. A Chasind, I think. Dark hair, weird eyes. She didn't see me. I'd been sneaking, practicing."

He knew how quietly she moved. She even fought quietly, slipping through her enemies like a wraith. She could feel his eyes on her back.

"She was holding a feather. It was brown and gold and white, from a wing, I think. And she said something. The air…shifted and where she'd been standing there was a bird, a wee little falcon with gold eyes. It hovered there for a minute and then just…up. Pumped its wings and went up and up and then it was gone."

She could feel the growl he let loose, in her chest. "Yes, it was magic." He couldn't see her face, so she went ahead and rolled her eyes. "But I remember thinking, 'If I could do _that_', if I could do that I'd never care about anything else, ever."

His eyes were still on her back, but she didn't know that he was thinking of the wings in grey ink that spread across her shoulders. Or that he was wondering what it would feel like to spread his hands across them, stretch his fingers out on the span.

She turned, snap quick, and startled, he stepped back up the stairs. "I can't though." She grinned at him, reassuring, almost. "It's just nice to watch them and know they can."

He nodded at her. The far away look she'd been carrying in her eyes since the night at the Hanged Man was gone and she was here, again. Lighter, somehow. It was almost worth the rotting fish smell that would cling to them after they left the wharf.

"We should move on."


End file.
